I’ll bet that some of you got games for Christmas, such as a board game, a card game, or maybe a computer game.  If you received a new game, of course, you want to play it right away, but the first thing you have to do is learn the rules.  So you force yourself to sit down and read the side of the box or the instruction sheet.  A game is worthless if you don’t know the rules.  All our lives we’ve heard that you have to play by the rules.  We’ve heard that cheaters never win and winners never cheat.  Rules are particularly important to children, and it feels like we spend most of our childhood learning the rules. Math rules: one plus one is two.  Spelling rules: i before e except after c.  Religious rules: Thou shalt not kill.  Learning the rules prepares us for the game of life; the rules prepare us to be grow-ups.

In his Letter to the Galatians, St Paul says that the purpose of the Law was to prepare us for maturity in Christ.  He says that the “law was our disciplinarian” until Christ came.  Disciplinarian is a so-so translation of the Greek word paidagogos.  In ancient the Greek and Roman world the paidagogos was a trusted slave whose job it was to walk the children to and from school.  But his job was more than just that.  In addition to escorting the children to school, he was also in charge of supervising the children’s moral instruction.  I suppose you could say that the paidagogos taught the boys the rules of the game of life.

St. Paul is making an analogy between the paidagogos and the Law.  When a boy reaches maturity, he knows the rules and the paigagogos is no longer needed.  By analogy, when a person of faith reaches maturity in Christ, the Law is no longer needed.  Paul says that the Law kept us imprisoned until the time of our maturity, but this attitude toward to Law is perhaps unfair.  Many, many Jewish people who live under the Law don’t find it to be a prison at all.  In fact, they consider it to be a source of joy and life.  Consider, for example, Psalm 119.  It is the longest of all the psalms, 176 verse, each one extolling the beauty and perfection of the Law and the joy that comes from following its demands.  The French philosopher Paul Riccouer says that the 613 Jewish laws are an attempt to apply God’s holiness to every aspect of human life.  The commentary on the Law is an attempt to apply the Law further; an attempt to apply the Law to new situations in an ever-changing world.  Of course, Christianity has rules, too.  We understand, however, that the rules are a kind of shorthand so that we can quickly and easily know what to do in ordinary situations.  But we also understand that there are extraordinary situations and that, given the complexity of humanity and life, perhaps there really is no such thing as an ordinary situation.  And finally we understand that sometimes the rules are wrong, and we need an authority by which we can judge the rules themselves.

The uniquely Christian answer is that rather than follow a set of rules we follow a person, Jesus Christ.  We follow Jesus because he is the perfect image of God; he is the face of God.  We know Jesus because we read the stories about him in the Gospels, which tell us that his way is a way of mercy and compassion.  We read that he thought that having mercy and compassion was the best, the only, way of perfectly fulfilling all the Law.  But we don’t just know Jesus because we read about him in a Book.  We know Jesus because his Spirit is still with us, both as individuals and as communities, to guide us into all truth.  Following a person rather than a set of rules allows us to respond faithfully to any situation and to critique the rules themselves.

Life is far more complicated than a board game, or a card game, or a computer game.  Life doesn’t always follow the rules.  As we get older we learn that there are exceptions to the rules.  One plus one equals two but one plus negative one equals zero.  It is i before e except after c and in words like neighbor and weigh.  Thou shalt not kill, but it may be permissible to kill in self defense or as a legal combatant during war.  Sometimes the rules – the Law and the commentary on the Law – can’t keep up with the situations we encounter.  So what do we do when life doesn’t fit the rules?